Immigrant advocates had complained under the Bush administration about fear instilled in immigrant communities so I wanted to see if things were the same or had changed under Obama in Northern Nevada given the record high deportations during his first term.

Peter Vogel, executive director of Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada, said, “ICE came into our community and had some high profile raids at McDonald’s prior to Obama, and that frightened the community. But I think the Obama administration has been able to minimize the risk if you’re law-abiding. People see less of a short-term risk of wandering into a place and being thrown out of the country. If you’re not law-abiding, then you’re on your own. But I think if you’re law-abiding, you feel much less risk.”

Kyle Edgerton, who is also with Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada, works with unauthorized immigrants who seek help getting through the arduous, years-long process of gaining legal status.

The short version of his reply is that Obama’s deportation methods are less fear-inducing because they don’t rely on SWAT teams storming businesses but instead are done more with tedious examinations of employment records. But he says immigrants are more likely to be deported now and the current methods are creating distrust with law enforcement, which causes problems because it makes illegal immigrants less likely to report crimes that harm the community.

Edgerton’s full reply:

Obama has done interesting things and seems to be changing the deportation approach in two different ways.

For one, he’s generally reducing the number of flashy kick-in-the-door raids. Instead you have one ICE agent audit (businesses’ employment) forms for eight hours and it’s a better use of manpower. Instead of instilling fear into the community, they get a two-week notice they have to prove their status or lose their job. It’s less fear-inducing.

Another thing he’s done is permitted the expansion (already started under Bush) of a program called Secure Communities, which has caused a big increase in interconnectedness of the civil immigration system and the criminal justice system.

Say you’re driving around Reno and make a turn without a blinker and get pulled over and the officer asks for identification and the officer decides to detain you. You end up at Washoe County Jail and get fingerprinted. Instead of the prints just going to the Nevada repository to check if you’re suspected in a crime, the fingerprints are forwarded from the FBI to ICE and they run them against their own database. “If this is a match for someone detained at the border two years ago or if you know this person is here (illegally), there’s a hold put on this person. And ICE comes in usually without a lawyer and pressures the person into accepting deportation. This really mixes those two systems (civil immigration and criminal justice).

What we’re told in support of this program is that this initiative is to identify and remove dangerous criminal aliens, who are hurting people and committing serious crimes. Certainly some of this exists and we’re being told it’s almost exclusively used for these types of folks, but the majority in Nevada and across the country have no convictions or minor convictions.

The chances of deportation are higher now but just not in as newsworthy of a way. You used to have to worry about ICE coming to your place of work, but now red and blue lights flashing in the rearview are a sign you could be in a bad situation. It’s undermining trust between immigrant community and law enforcement. If there’s one community vulnerable to crime, it’s the illegal immigrant community. It doesn’t set up a good dynamic. I think the new approach has more promise but it’s not being implemented very well. You’d be hard-pressed to show me someone who is here illegally and creating harm to the community who shouldn’t be on the first plane out of here, but 3/5ths to 4/5ths are not self-evidently these types of individuals.